In Carol Emshwiller's The Mount, Earth has been invaded by litlte aliens known as Hoots, distinguished by weak legs, extremely powerful arms, and a loud hoot. Rather than exterminating mankind, the Hoots have adopted humans as their horses. Hoots ride humans by clamping their legs around their shoulders and coaxing them on with both pain and meaningless flattery. The narrator, Charley, is a young boy raised from youth by the Hoots. His dream is to become a prize-winning runner, like his legendary father. Then everything goes to hell.

I'd heard a lot about The Mount but, when I finally laid my hands on the book (thanks to a friend of mine), I just couldn't get into it. The book is most effective at describing the odd relationship between Hoot and man. Humans are certainly slaves, but the relationship is more complex than that simple label since the Hoots clearly feel affection for their charges, and more often than not those sentiments are reciprocated. At the very least, The Mount makes the relationship between humans and their horses seem pretty creepy.

Of course, Emswhiller is hardly the first to tweak the pulp myth of alien enslavement, and in my mind she doesn't do as good a job as John Christopher did in his young adult novel, The City of Gold and Lead, which played with a similar concept. Nor does her world seem as fully fleshed out. There are a few hints about what Earth is like after the Hoot invasion, but there is never the sense of a deep, rich background that most science fiction novels desperately need.

Part of the problem is The Mount's narrator, Charley. I understand that he's a young boy. But Emshwiller, I'm afraid, uses Charley's age as an excuse for some pretty dodgy writing. I know that Emshwiller is an experienced author. So it disappoints me that she, like so many other authors (both in genre and out), think that the best way to tell a child's story is to replicate the speech patterns, redundancies, and tunnel vision of a child. Er, I think not. Even a first-person narrative can effectively suggest the voice of a child without sacrificing the story's other needs. And here, Charley's stubborn, bumbling voice interferes with The Mount's plot, setting, and style.

The story does pick up a bit in the middle, when Charley meets his long-lost father and a bunch of other misfits. Charley's father--who was named Beauty by the Hoots for his impressive running--is an impressive figure, notwithstanding his annoying speech pattern. And the pain he quietly suffers at seeing his son's utter brainwashing is affecting. But just as I thought the story would end on a high note, Emshwiller launches into the oddest, most fitfully plotted conclusion I've read in a long time. The actual ending of the novel is very talky and very weird. I'm still not sure if it makes complete sense. And, of course, like much of the rest of the book, it seems somehow incomplete.

Copyright © 2005 Steven Wu